Deserting Our Troops

Dissident Voice

The
Army and Air Force failed to obey Congress' orders to create baseline medical
records for soldiers sent to overseas war zones, in this case Iraq, Congress'
General Accounting Office (GAO) concludes in a just-released report.

"The
percentage of Army and Air Force service members missing one or both of their
pre- and post-deployment health assessments ranged from 38 to 98 percent of our
samples," the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, found. "Moreover,
when health assessments were conducted, as many as 45 percent of them were not
done within the required time frames."

These
statistics confirm what veterans of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War and members of
Congress have been saying for months: the Pentagon has been ignoring a law
whose primary intention was avoiding a repeat of the military's mistakes
surrounding its handling of veteran illnesses that have become known as Gulf
War Syndrome.

After
the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, tens of thousands of veterans became sick with
mysterious illnesses. But because the Pentagon did not have baseline medical
records for each soldier in that conflict, it was very slow to acknowledge and
act on its responsibility to provide health care for these veterans.

So,
in 1997, Congress passed a Public Law 105-85 requiring the military to conduct
detailed pre- and post-deployment medical records for every soldier sent into a
war zone. The GAO says the military "did not comply" with that
requirement in the Iraq War. It also found the Department of Defense (DOD)
"did not maintain a complete, centralized database of service members'
medical assessments and immunizations."

The
issue has been simmering in veteran's circles for some time, but with the
Pentagon announcing last week a new round of National Guard deployments to
Iraq, it raises the question anew: will the Pentagon fully implement the law?

"We've
been calling for it. It's time for it to happen," said Steven Robinson,
executive director of the National Gulf War Veterans Center. "We've had
the hearings on the hill. We've done the Kabuki dance. [Undersecretary of
Defense for Health Affairs William] Winkenwerder says they don't need to do the
screening. The GAO says it's insufficient. Now what?"

Robinson
said he and other veterans advocates will be speaking to members of the House
Armed Services Committee -- which requested the GAO report -- and Veterans
Affairs Committee this week to see what the next steps may be.

Veterans'
advocates became aware last fall and winter that troops being sent to Iraq were
not being examined as required. Instead, the military gave soldiers a short
questionnaire to fill out. After congressional hearings and public criticism
from veterans last winter, the Pentagon said it would conduct post-deployment
exams and expand its questionnaire.

The
GAO report was based on investigations at five military bases: Fort Campbell;
Fort Drum; Hurlburt Field and Travis Air Force Base. It recommended that the
Secretary of Defense and undersecretary responsible for military health
"establish an effective quality assurance program that will help ensure
that the military services comply with the force health protection and
surveillance requirements for all service members."

In
a Sept. 11 letter responding to the GAO report, Assistant Secretary of Defense
William Winkenwerder said his office "has already established a quality
assurance program for pre- and post-deployment health assessments."
Winkenwerder said this program has been in place "since June 2003,"
which would be several months after Congress held hearings on the law and
launched the GAO investigation.

While
it remains to be seen what impact the GAO report will have on military health
policies, many soldiers now in Iraq and their family members say the Pentagon
has all-but ignored the requirement for creating the baseline medical records.

"My
husband [an Army Reservist]'s physical was waived before he left," wrote
one member of Military Families Speak Out
(MFSO), an activist group of families with relatives in the military in Iraq.
Those contacted requested their names not be used.

"Myself
and my wife were given the anthrax and small pox vaccines and were not given a
choice in the matter," wrote a soldier. "No screening was done before
these vaccines were given to see if there might be complications from a genetic
or health standpoint. No blood work was done on us besides a few general
questions from a colonel."

"My
son has returned home and as far as I know no one has made any mention of
medical testing," wrote another member of MFSO. "They arrived back
the first week in August... [They] gave him a questionnaire to look over. There
are three sections, but he said [questions] in the last section, more current
symptoms didn't seem relative for now."

These
anecdotes corroborate the GAO's findings: that the pre- and post-deployment
medical exams were largely an after-thought, not a policy priority.

Among
the soldiers contacted, several said they were aware there could be health
consequences of their military services. What they and their family members
most frequently cited was exposure to byproducts of depleted uranium (DU)
munitions. DU is a slightly radioactive metal that's denser than lead and burns
at very high temperatures. It is used in bullets and artillery pieces. Upon
impact, it burns and vaporizes. Particles from the smoke are very tiny and can
be breathed in and become embedded in lung tissue.

"My
daughter told me that as they rolled into Baghdad from Kuwait, right after the
end of the big bombing, in mid-April, there were Iraqi tanks on the sides of
the roads, that still had the dead Iraqi soldiers in them," wrote another
MFSO member. "She asked why the tanks were not cleared off or the bodies
taken out, and she was told that no one wanted the duty because the tanks had
been hit with DU shells.

"She
said they all assumed the dust in the road was full of DU dust, and she said
she felt she would now be at an increased risk of cancer, as did all of her
unit. She was manning the 50-caliber on top of the truck, and said she breathed
in the dust for many miles."

Only
one e-mail out of more than one dozen received from MFSO families said their
spouse or relative had received the pre- and post-deployment exams and shots.

In
conclusion, the GAO said the Pentagon was poised to repeat the mistakes of the
first Gulf War, where it did not promptly or adequately address the illnesses
among veterans that became known as Gulf War Syndrome.

"Failure
to complete post-deployment health assessments may risk a delay in obtaining
appropriate medical follow-up attention for a health problem or concern that
may have arisen during or following the deployment," the GAO said.
"Similarly, incomplete and inaccurate medical records and deployment
databases would likely hinder DOD's ability to investigate the causes of any
future health problems that may arise coincident with deployments."

Steven Rosenfeld is a commentary
editor and audio producer for TomPaine.com, where this article first appeared (www.tompaine.com)